#expat life #digital nomad #vietnam travel #southeast asia exploration #lifestyle design

First Time in Vietnam - More First Impressions

Key Insight AI-Generated

After living in Thailand for a year, the transition to Da Nang, Vietnam, reveals a distinct shift in urban culture. Vietnam offers a more kinetic 24/7 lifestyle compared to the structured, residential quiet of Thai cities after 10 p.m. This move highlights the necessity of localized navigation—using bicycles over walking and relying on digital reviews for safe, authentic food.

Key Takeaways AI-Generated

Leverage Google Maps reviews for street food to significantly minimize the risk of food poisoning when traveling.
Bicycles are often the most practical, time-efficient mode of transportation in mid-sized Asian cities where walking is too slow and motorbikes may be intimidating.
Maintain high levels of presence in your current location by limiting pre-occupation with future immigration or travel logistics.
Mega-cities offer incredible experiences but require significant coordination and energy to maintain a social life compared to mid-sized hubs.

AI-Generated Summary AI-Generated

Stepping into the vibrant streets of Da Nang, Vietnam, our latest adventure captures the raw energy of a city that refuses to sleep.

Moving from the relatively predictable rhythms of Thailand, the transition here feels like a plunge into a 24-hour urban experiment, where the buzz of late-night sugarcane shops and early-morning street life pulses with a unique, industrious spirit.

It is an exploration defined by sensory shifts, from the mesmerizing skyline of tall, skinny buildings reflected in coastal waters to the shared warmth of community connections that bridge the gap between traveler and local life.

This journey is less about checking off sights and more about embracing the fluid, spontaneous nature of expat living.

Whether it is navigating the dense, neon-lit corridors of a mega-city like Bangkok or finding the quiet, bicycle-friendly rhythms of the Vietnamese coast, the focus remains on the authentic human experience.

Through late-night discussions, impromptu meals, and the exchange of travel wisdom, we are peeling back the layers of Southeast Asia to find the beauty in the daily commute and the unexpected comfort found in far-flung places.

YouTube Video Questions Derived by AI AI-Generated

How does the expat lifestyle in Da Nang compare to living in Chiang Mai or Bangkok?

What are the best strategies for avoiding food poisoning while eating street food in Vietnam?

Is it better to live in a mega-city or a medium-sized town when moving to Southeast Asia as an expat?

Key Moments AI-Generated

Mentioned in this video

Da Nang Bangkok Phnom Penh Google Maps Chiang Mai

Frequently Asked Questions

AI-Generated Is Da Nang better for expats than Bangkok?

AI-Generated It depends on your lifestyle. Da Nang offers a more relaxed, beach-adjacent, and bicycle-friendly environment, whereas Bangkok is a massive, futuristic mega-city that requires more logistical planning for daily life.

AI-Generated How do I safely eat street food in Vietnam?

AI-Generated The most effective method is to utilize Google Maps to check the reviews of specific vendors or restaurants. Looking for consistent positive feedback and avoiding places that seem unhygienic are the best ways to mitigate health risks.

AI-Generated Why is the architecture in Vietnam so tall and skinny?

AI-Generated Due to the high cost of real estate and limited land availability in urban centers, builders maximize vertical space by constructing tall, narrow buildings with a small footprint.

hey everybody I thought I'd hop on here and do a live stream and just uh getting caught up on everything getting settled into getting settled in to the swing of things here in Vietnam I got here did I get here let me look at the calendar it hasn't been a full week yet so I got here on Monday and it's Saturday night now so I've been here for about five days six days and it's going well um definitely an adjustment after spending a year in Thailand this is the first time in a year I've been outside of Thailand and it certainly got a lot of interesting unique differences I think one of the top ones is is well there's a lot there's a lot to go into it's hard for me to really say there's one thing that stands out Above the Rest I do notice there does seem to be at least here in daang I can't speak to the bigger cities although I imagine it's the same a bit more of a late night scene um when I was in changmai I felt like the city chilled out a lot hey nomadic Mariner welcome good to see you thanks so much for joining just talking a little bit about my first impressions of Vietnam and wanted to I know I did a video on that I wanted to dig in a bit more on that on this stream and feel free to chime in I'm not sure if you've been to Vietnam yet nomadic Mariner but it's um it's definitely a new country for me it's been very interesting so far I'd say the first thing that stuck out to me so far is that there does seem to be a bit more of a late night scene here um so I noticed when I was in changai and even in Bangkok that things chilled out a lot after say 10 11 p.m.

now I know in Bangkok you have the Lively areas around say like Nana or soy Cowboy some of those areas that are oriented toward a sort of a party scene but we're I staying in Bang and in changai in Bangkok I stayed a lot in saton which is much more residential it's the former downtown or one of the earlier downtowns in Bangkok before the downtown kind of shifted a bit and in changai uh these cities outside of their kind of nightlife areas um even Patia uh they quiet down around I would say like 10 111 p.m.

whereas I've noticed here in Vietnam there's a spot and I'm not even like in the center of town I'm more to the north side of town north side of the peninsula so I'm not in the my an area I can actually uh pull up a map here in a bit but I'll wait to do that and there are like several restaurants and these sugar cane juice shops open until like 2 a.m.

now it's probably going to be a lot more in like a Hanoi or a hoim men City but that was really surprising to me because in Thailand at 2 am unless you're in a a nightlife District your main options are going to be like 711 um or if you want food or something like that then you can use a delivery app but it's pretty you know chill like I've wandered around changmai at 2 3 4 in the morning and there's not a whole lot going on I know it is University town so a lot of students have to get to bed early and they're not able to you know be out all night but uh that's been an interesting unique difference here in dang is uh that I've really enjoyed is like oh wow I've been having trouble sleeping or I nap during the day and I'm awake up late I could still go out and then it's also seems to be like an early to rise kind of city like it seems like something's open up at 6: a.m.

so it's just been kind of interesting to me to see that there is this 247 atmosphere here that I wasn't expecting at all um I did anticipate that being more the case than like a huchim city just because it's the biggest city in Vietnam and in a Hanway which is a really large city as well a cultural capital but it's been surprising to me to see that in D nomatic Mariner says I haven't been to Vietnam but I would like to go I can say Vietnam has been to me here in Houston you know that's so funny nomadic Mariner actually one of my buddies from high school he lives in Houston and his girlfriend is Vietnamese so he's not Vietnamese uh but his girlfriend is and they've been together for a while and it's uh yeah it's just really interesting to learn about Houston in that way I personally I've only had layovers in Houston so I haven't actually spent a lot of time there but I've heard that the community there is fairly big I know uh one of my friends in NorCal she's actually from Orange County so apparently Orange County has a lot of Vietnamese people as well um a couple of cities that I have lived in so my hometown Nashville has some Vietnamese people I would say it's not as much as like a Houston or like a SoCal but there's some great Vietnamese restaurants in Nashville and um I know that my mom when she worked for the state the state of Tennessee that one of her co-workers was actually a Vietnamese woman uh and then in Denver when I moved to Denver there's this huge there's this like Vietnamese almost I don't know if I call it Vietnamese District but there's this uh Federal Boulevard there's a ton of f spots up and down Federal Boulevard so there's like f 555 uh f99 um it's kind of funny they they you know of course they all indicate that they're serving F but they use different numbers to differentiate and really really busy spots I mean those restaurants like I haven't been to Denver I haven't really spent much time in Denver in a while last time I was in Denver was about a year ago and I just passed through I didn't really spend much time there but it's uh yeah just really interesting to make that connection right like before I went to Thailand I don't know if I'd ever met a Thai person uh maybe I met a Thai person and didn't know in the States but I'd never really met a Thai person before I went to Cambodia I'd never met a person from Cambodia um but the difference is with Vietnam I've met Vietnamese people I've eaten a lot of Vietnamese food I have some Vietnamese American friends it's um so I had that external connection to the country that hasn't been the case for very many places that I've been um my grandfather on my mom's side did serve in the Vietnam situation I don't want to use the word just because I know sometimes YouTube doesn't like it but of course the one that we're all familiar with really tragic and unfortunate but um yeah he he was you know involved in that and you know didn't I don't think he really talked about it much because there's you know there's a lot of there's a lot of challenges associated with that that's the best way for me to put it in a a polite way uh pneumatic Mariner says the architecture in Vietnam is beautiful from what seen online yeah I absolutely agree it's been shocking to me like it's um you see a lot of these what I kind of jokingly call uh tall skinnies so you see a lot at least in daang you see a lot of these really tall buildings that are like not very big and they are very visually appealing and they're also very functional right because land and real estate in general is very expensive in Vietnam and so that's the best way they can maximize their use of land is to build these really tall buildings but that don't have a large footprint so it makes for a really interesting Skyline and I missed it tonight because I I went out for dinner I wanted to try this restaurant uh in the more busy area and I missed the fireworks but people in and it was actually the last one of this year unfortunately but a lot of people in my building we they went up on the rooftop and actually watched the fireworks display and you get a beautiful view of uh parts of the skyline from the the roof and I actually rode further north uh from where I'm at and was able to see a gorgeous view of the skyline along the beach it's really an interesting visual uh because a lot of us we've been to big cities and we've been to beach cities there's not as many like decent sized cities that are right on the beach like dang is so it just makes for a really interesting visual where you see the boats in the foreground and then in the background you uh you in around the boats you see the water and then behind the boats you see the skyline so it's uh really cool visually speaking uh tc11 335 is food poisoning an issue there for westerners so this is my general opinion on that uh also including my experiences in Thailand um I personally am pretty cautious about street food um that's not to say I turn my nose up at it that's not to say that I would never have it but I have had food poisoning in the past in some countries in Southeast Asia and it seems to be mostly associated with street food so what I've done here in Vietnam to kind of ensure that I can minimize that is that I only at least up until this point I'm almost only or only when it comes to food going to restaurants where I can check their reviews so I've been uh I'll search on my um Google like search or Google Maps bun me bunme near me and so then I'll just check the reviews like hey what do people think about this spot has anybody had any issues um and that's served me well and the places I've been going have been fantastic food here is really good in Vietnam I mean I've really enjoyed it I haven't had any tummy troubles fortunately if that does happen then I'm not sure how I'll sort of report it or share it I wouldn't want a single that establishment out and I know there's unfortunately a lot that goes into that kind of thing but so far no issues so and I've been um I mostly had so I've had bunit um which is this like noodle dish with and they put the meat on top and they have some vegetables in there that was really good I had that was the first meal I had here and then I've been eating a like uh several bun me and it's got the French bread and then they put the meat on they put the pickled vegetables and cilantro I always ask for no mayo some places put it Mayo on it some places don't I'm just not a big fan of mayo uh but certainly you know you're a person that likes it with that you could have it with that but no I as far as um I my experience has been I haven't had any issues with that I should ask uh my buddy Jake a subscriber is also here for I think another week or two and he's been here for several months so I should probably ask him we met up earlier this week we'll probably meet up again before he heads out has he had any challenges with that has that been a concern for him I know one of my Tha friends his uh girlfriend a long-term partner she came here before they were together and she had some tummy troubles and I don't know which city that was in whether that was in uh a big city if she was in a small town if it was a tourist destination so that's um yeah and and to be fair I've had food poisoning in Colorado so when I used to live in Colorado USA uh Colorado a lot of the food has to be trucked in because it's in the center of the country it's just in a not very convenient spot as far as getting things there so yeah I used to get it on a sounds bad to say somewhat consistent basis out there um so even in the US that can certainly be a concern I think just doing due diligence on checking reviews being cautious um can help to mitigate that I'll say that you can't really eliminate it anywhere you go totally um not probably not in Japan I I'll say that you know Japan I didn't ever feel sick um they have very very high standards when it comes universally high standards probably not in Singapore either but uh for most countries you know doing uh doing checking into the reviews trying to figure out like hey has anybody else had this issue um and then avoiding those places will be your best bet I'd also say that um you know if you feel unsure you can always back out you know take it to go and then toss it if you feel like you see something that maybe makes you uncomfortable um better to throw away5 $10 dollar however much the meal costs you if it's street food a few dollars than to risk getting sick because sometimes you know we see something that may look good it may entice us and we change our mind because for whatever reason we change our mind and that way you don't hurt anybody's feelings but you don't also risk um getting ill because I did get food poisoning once in changai of course I was there for six months but I was wrecked um I had cold chills I was um I was feeling very very ill and I'm not sure what it was because I was taking czone at the time and uh I should say prazone at the time and it just increased my appetite dramatically to where I was just eating a lot I kind of ballooned up you could see in some of my videos from that time and so I'm not 100% certain on what caused it but that did cause me to be a bit more cautious um you know with my choices nomatic Mariner says have you have you had tie rolled or stir fried ice cream I tried some here in Houston it's good it actually lasts longer than regular ice cream yeah I've had the rolled ice cream I like it a lot I uh one sec I'm gonna turn on the AC because it's getting a little bit warm already yeah I'm a fan I'm a fan of the uh stir fried and the rolled ice cream nomatic Mariner it's delicious I think it's great it's fun it's creative it looks cool I've seen it I saw it a lot in um I'm trying to think of the different places I saw in Thailand but ice cream is very popular throughout the country you've got of course your standard 7-Eleven choices where all of them have these coolers in the side but then if you want to take it a step further I think the best ice cream I had of course wasn't the rolled style or the fried cell but it was on this island off of the coast of Patia and it's called Kon and why don't we just go and pull up a map so I can share a little bit about that so it was on this island and it's off the coast to Patia you take like a fair it's like 30 bot each way and down here I it was was on I think it was on this road to newal beach there's they had all these giant tubs of ice cream and it was like for for 40 bot you could get five scoops of ice cream and it was just genius they had all these delicious toppings too I think that was probably the ice cream that stuck out to me the most in Thailand but yeah you can't go wrong with ice cream in Thailand it's just so refreshing it's so delicious it's a nice alternative if you're um you know if you've had a lot of smoothies then it's nice to have a change from that yeah why don't we pull it back to dang and I could talk a bit more about dang so um tonight I had pizza this this is where I I went for dinner tonight place called Pizza House I went in thinking I was going to have some uh pizza but I ended up seeing this delicious looking chicken dish on the menu you can see they've got great looking pizza I'll probably go back because it was really tasty I mean I was really impressed the chicken was delicious they put some like Pudo on top and then some cheese on top they had this mushroom sauce and then vegetables and potatoes really great meal um it was nice to have something a bit more western style because I've been really uh having a lot of Asian food the last yeah the last few months I when I was in Bangkok I was bouncing back and forth between going out for sushi and and then having Thai food and then Sushi and then Thai food so really nice to have something in line with what I'm used to having back home yeah that's what I had for dinner um I've been borrowing a bicycle from my host here they've been so generous to let me borrow their bicycle it's not a motorbike so it's a pedal but it's been a great workout like I've been riding it all over the city and definitely feel it but uh it's it's so much faster than walking I mean it's so much faster than walking I underestimated how much faster it is than walking because the first couple days I was here in dang I would just try to walk and it's like uh okay the city is I would say somewhat pedestrian friendly but it's so timec consuming to walk I mean to get to the pizza house for my apartment is like a one hour walk where it's more like a 10 to 15 minute bicycle ride so uh you could imagine like two hours of walking time to go have a 30 minute meal whereas you know it's more like could be like I could get that done in San hour if I'm riding the bike each way some Saro I found Vietnam I went there couldn't wait Cambodia is amazing um I like and I'll go ahead and just clarify this uh because I know some people will be rewatching this I love all the countries in Southeast Asia I think they are all interesting they're unique they've got different kinds of sort of Vibes or flavors um I don't find any one of them to be better than any of the others uh but I can say I have spent at to date I've spent more time in Cambodia than Vietnam I've spent probably about a month in Cambodia total and less than a week here in Vietnam um so I love Cambodia uh Cambodia to me is an underrated Hidden Gem it's uh the people are super friendly I had some I did some wild partying in penom pen I found that to be like part of the wildest party scene I've experienced in Southeast Asia I know some people have their own cities that they like for that purpose but and and it helped too when I went to Pome pen I had some built-in friends uh that connected with online and they took me out and we just had a wild night I mean it was it was wild and it was like day after day in Peno pen I had a blast it's just such a it's such a vibrant City it's such a dynamic city we can pull up Pome pen here actually yeah as you can see it's marked as one of my favorites but it's um it's just such a wild I don't know how else to put it like I was staying in the Riverside Neighborhood uh actually I can I can show you guys the hotel I was saying at this hotel new season Riverside Hotel and like I just remember uh getting to this hotel and I think I've covered this a bit in a former stream so I'll try to be brief but remember getting this hotel and paying the driver I had a took driver to take me from outside of Pome air uh Pome pen airport to here and I paid him and gave him a tip well evidently it wasn't sufficient because he started screaming and yelling at me and uh the hotel staff let me in and now he's yelling at them and the hotel staff is so apologetic to me they're like uh yeah this is this is like a daily uh kind of thing and I I just laughed it off you know to me it's just like like to me Pome pen reminds me a lot of New Orleans so um I know that nomadic Mariner he's from Houston and so he's not terribly far from New Orleans and New Orleans like to me penom pen felt like New Orleans and Southeast Asia it's this River Town you see it's right by the ton laap River you've got this kind of uh nightlife District Riverside where you have a lot of foreign tourists staying right most tourists I would say stay in either Riverside or they stay in um Russian Market this area or they say in BKK uh two which is yeah right here so mostly in this section of the city so this is just like one like basically degrees of partying that the concentration of the party seems to be in Riverside and as you go out the part's a little bit less and less but it's still there like it's not it's not that much less to be honest it just you could perceive it because the party in the Riverside spills out into the street and in these neighborhoods forther out is a little bit more contained in the buildings in the bars um but it's a wild town I mean it is just wild those people know how to have fun very very hospitable I found dating there to be fantastic I like perhaps like my favorite city for dating um in Southeast Asia if I'm honest as well and uh a lot of people willing to just like show me around town like I met different women on dating apps and like hey let let me you know show you this uh interesting spot or let me take you here or there and kind of talk with you a bit about the history and um the English there is really great too you've got such a big expat scene in Pome pen tons of English speakers my the hotel staff uh the owner is from India so new season uh the owner is from India so he speaks English and then the staff is from Bangladesh and Nepal uh so they also have solid English and it just made it so convenient it was so uh comfortable to and and now I will say when I got further out oh wow um what a small world uh samaro yeah yeah I agree there's a lot of uh you know there's yeah it's just it's hard to put into words um nomadic Mariner I was born in New Orleans my family moved to Houston in 2012 yeah so you're very familiar um I know that you know with the uh the challenges with Katrina that it was really hard time and I don't mean to be dismissive um about that you know as far as my praise for New Orleans I love New Orleans too I've had a blast I've been to New Orleans a couple of times and both times I had a blast people were super welcoming um super friendly except for the parking the the parking attendant I dealt with was really rude she's get P charging like 40 bucks a day too which I know is standard for the French quarter but anyway I expected for that price to to get a bit better service but the food was fantastic some of the best food I've ever had um and the Hospitality was great it's I love the architecture um wow so samaro that's something I'm gonna have to keep in mind as far as you mentioned enor watt uh that's something I'm have to keep in mind to rent a bicycle it's huge I've heard it's like one of the largest temple complexes in the world um so and of course it's a UNESCO world heritage site I haven't made it up there so next time I go to Cambo I love to make it up to enor Watt make it up to CM re it's you know I loved Pome pen so much I think I'll love it as well I actually stayed in an Airbnb uh in Stockton so uh Stockton California has one of the largest Cambodian populations outside of Cambodia along with Long Beach California and I say my host uh because I was working in Bay area but uh remotely and so I wanted to be in the California time zone but I knew knew the job was kind of winding down and so I had a host from his family is from Cambodia so he's actually born in the States but he was such a wonderful host such a friendly guy um really really I still stay in touch with him actually um so there it's I found it hard to beat Cambodian hospitality like um the people who were running the laundry service too were super friendly it was uh fantastic nomadic yeah it's a good place to party and eat living there is different though I don't think I could live there yeah nomadic Mariner I think it would just be hard to live there because um it's set up it's oriented toward tourism right so same thing with my hometown Nashville uh some of my friends do try to talk me into moving back to Nashville Nashville has a lot of great qualities but it's more oriented toward tourism than living there that's just my personal opinion that the city is catering toward people who want to come in have a good time uh make some great memories have some of the delicious food maybe go out for some nice drinks see some of the historical districts the Garden District like in New Orleans the Garden District of course the French quter um see some jazz music and then you know go back home to Houston or Dallas or uh Tampa you know and so it's uh it's wonderful for visitors I think it would be tough to be local and have to navigate around like people there to have a good time right because when you're living there you're trying to go you know pay your taxes or you're trying to go to Walmart and in a city like New Orleans there's limitations on Space right so I don't know that there's a Walmart anywhere near the city center because it's just such a dense City there's also a lot of historical limit there's also a lot of limitations in terms of the uh preser you know historical preservation so they don't want to pull down buildings that have a lot of significance in that way and so it's not the most convenient place to live uh and also there's a lot of Temptation there if I'm being honest like I could see in a a party town that you know it could be easy to get sucked into just doing that all the time and that was something that somebody actually warned me a friend of a friend when I was partying it up in penom pen he was trying to caution me because he could see like the glow in my eyes from just like having such a good time he's like hey man hey man this is like this can't be your every day I just want to let you know this is a wonderful time I'm sure you're having fun this is not um this is not your real life so just like be cautious when you're coming here and you're having an amazing time um and you know people like I said people were super welcoming I didn't want to leave to be honest but I had to continue my Journeys I actually stayed in um I can pull it up here this is a different Hotel I stayed in because uh yeah I stayed at this H huh that's strange that that's not the right picture okay I don't yeah so I stayed at this hotel uh behind or sign market and the owner was super friend he was telling me how he's like from China and came to Pome pen got into the hotel business and how he did like a road trip from New York to Miami and how much he loved America he was going on and on like gushing about how much he loved America how nice people were to him people were helping him with directions and it was really just a wonderful conversation he's like offer me drinks and I'm like oh why like people here are so nice um everybody was just so nice to me and P pen just uh really really friendly and a lot of characters I mean the town that town is full of characters hey Isaac welcome welcome um yeah nomadic Mariner says hey Isaac samaro says I just found a temple for myself and climbed it and meditated there was such a memorable place it was a Hindu Temple dedicated to Vishnu the whole Temple complex okay I'll have to keep that in mind some fact I'm going to make a note of for that make a note of that to myself so that next time I make it over there I'll go and check it out I'd love to go back um if I didn't already have a couple of choices in priority then I would be going back to Cambodia next um after Vietnam so I plan to stay in Vietnam for my be is here is good here for three months and one thought occurred to me do a v run allow I can let's see pull that up here it's really popular for people so I'm here in dang uh at least pre pandemic I think it's still the case it's like $110 and you get a bus ride from dang to uh one of these border cities or border towns in LA and you go over um and then I don't know if you I don't know if you book at online and then you show it to them at the border and then they stamp you in but anyway a lot of people in the past have used this to to extend their time in Vietnam so they they take that bus get their visa sorted out and then they come back to Vietnam um because Vietnam like it's just so different from anything I've experienced I mean and also from anything I've experienced in a while so Vietnam is part of what I would call the sinosphere similar to Japan for example um and it's different from Thailand which a lot of people would say is part of the endosphere so Thailand is more influenced by India you see a lot of Thai people have names influenced by h s or they're basically rooted in Sanskrit and so it's just very very different than anything I've experienced um yeah yeah Vietnam is is definitely interesting it's I think deceptive like as far as size goes too I've had friends that have done uh that basically started in Hanoi and then worked their way down to HCM or started in HCM and worked their way up I think starting in the north and going to the South is the more popular way of approaching Vietnam I'm not sure that I'll make it to Hanoi on this trip uh because I'm going to be spending most of my time in this trip and dang I'm just not as I'm just not as much in the mood right now for big cities hey Tony welcome welcome Tony always good to see you so yeah right now I'm just not as much in the mood for big cities I was in Bangkok for three months before coming here to dang and I love Bangkok it's one of the coolest cities in the world it's just so futuristic it's got that Blade Runner Vibe where you see these massive neon lights and signs everywhere and it's you got these massive shopping malls um but it can be overwhelming right you feel like sometimes in Bangkok ah man there's like I'm surrounded by 15 million people and so being in dang has been kind of refreshing like oh okay I don't have to always double triple check in every direction to make sure I'm not like bumping into somebody um because I you know I always want to be courteous when I travel and so I don't know that I'll I need at least I don't know I need at least some more time before I go back to Mega City and I need to moderate the amount of time I spend um in a mega City like it's um so yeah I'm tempted to check out HCM for like a week uh maybe two weeks before I go on to my next destination but I'm trying to enjoy Vietnam and being the present because I felt like toward the end of my time in Thailand I was just my mind was off of Thailand I didn't fully enjoy it to the extent that I could have if I was being a little bit more present because I was thinking about all these moving Parts like okay how do I you know get Stamped Out make sure I process every my exit clearance through immigration so I can come back to Thailand again in the future because I just warned uh by my language School hey before you leave you need to go to immigration you need to get stamped out because if you leave without doing that then uh you may have some challenges uh coming back in the future because they're going to be wondering did anything happen like why didn't you get Stamped Out so I'd like to go back to Thailand in the future I still have like 10,000 bought uh I got back from a dep my deposit for my apartment and you know I went back and forth on if I should uh leave it in my uh Tha bank account but I was like H I don't know I don't know when exactly I'm going to be back here in Thailand I love Thailand I wish I could you know I wish that was my home base but until it's my home base if it becomes my home base one day I'd rather just keep the cash with me and next time I go to Thailand I'll have that cash in hand which will be amazing for getting a SIM card really quick um if I lose track of my SIM card here um you know paying for meals uh putting down a deposit right if I go back to Thailand and I stay for a few months I'll probably rent an apartment and they'll want to deposit so I'll have that cash in hand I that'll save me um backtack trips to the ATM I'll have to hit the ATM anyway uh if I for some reason my ti bank account gets closed I've heard of some people's accounts going dormant like if you don't use your Tha bank account for a year they start deducting 50 bot per month uh and then eventually they want to close it just because you know there's banks are in the risk in part banks are very riskable it they're very very concerned about risk and uh I found that to be the case around the world so uh they don't want to have free floating accounts that have no money in them that there's no telling when they're going to be used again for people who don't actually uh live in Thailand so uh very very valuable to get a tie bank account if you're staying there longterm but keep in mind if you depart and head on in your Journeys that they may have an interest to close it down if it's not going to be in use anymore so that's why I pulled that money out I didn't put it back in there I also heard it could be a struggle to use that Thai bank account outside of Thailand if you don't have a Thai SIM card in it and so part of me thought why don't I just leave the money in there and then when I decide to book my flight out of Vietnam I can use my I can use the money in my Thai bank account but I was like uh you know I don't know if I'll be able to access it and I don't want to be trying to contact them and ask them hey can you send me that money it just gets to be pretty convoluted so I'm glad I made the account it made living in Thailand so much more convenient but I accept that it may have to close it eventually Tony says mega cities can be really draining for us introverts Isaac says agreed yeah I I totally agree Tony I mean it's it's a lot of fun but it can just kind of wear on you because you're not able to sort of like in my experience in a way you're not really able to live in your head when you are in a mega city um you have to be aware You Have To Be watchful you have to keep an eye out for traffic you have to keep an eye out for uh people in a hurry right you know in a city like Bangkok even though it's a tourism Hub you've also got a lot of people trying to get to work trying to get home from work trying to run errands trying to go to the grocery store trying to live their lives pay their bills and you can feel kind of like yeah yeah I'll get to that in a second Tony um you feel you can feel lost in this sea of people and you'll struggle at least I struggled a bit in Bangkok with the fact that most my friends in Bangkok all my friends in Bangkok work very very hard they're typically working five to six days a week and on the weekends uh you know there's limitations like they've got chores on the weekend in some cases they're going to be hanging out with their families on the weekend um I still got time with my friends there which was really wonderful I friends with some wonderful Thai people in Bangkok but it's like going to New York City like if any of you guys have friends in New York City um any friends in La most of the people that live there because it's so expensive have to work all the time they have to work these very demanding jobs that take a lot out of them and so you're there like on semi vacation mode right and they're there trying to live their lives um whereas if you're in a smaller City more laidback people may have a little bit more free time um people may you know they may just have more time to chill out enjoy themselves relax go out to dinner after work if they're trying to meet up with you like in changmai uh my buddy Matt he lives like I have a certain favorite building I I really like in changai and he lives maybe like a 20 minute walk away which is not far at all uh in Thailand like he could drive to my apartment in 10 minutes or something like that so if we want to go out uh after he gets off work and at a time where I'm not working on the Chan or working on something else we could just like I could just walk over to the market and he could drive there and now we're hanging out whereas in Bangkok one of my friends lives like um on the east side like uh what used to be the edge of the city and then another friend lives like an hour um wow thank you so much Tony I I really appreciate you uh becoming our first member that's I really appreciate your support that's uh that's so kind thank you so much Tony um you know so so in Bangkok uh one of my friends you know she lives like she lives like an hour north of the city um and then the other friend she lives like on the what used to be the Eastern edge of the city and so for us to get together like we're having to coordinate one person is driving down uh and then the other person is is writing the BTS and then I'm writing the BTS or I'm trying to coordinate like I went into into the city center earlier so now we can pull up Bangkok here and so like we could just take the uh the suum vit BTS system area here so you know one one person is coming in and another person's driving down I'm trying to navigate maybe like on foot depending on where I'm at and so there's all this that goes into it um we're 30 45 minutes away from each other and then we're hopping in one person's car um so then we go and find like maybe a shopping mall we're trying to eat at okay so now she's got to drive into the parking garage can't park on the first floor can't park on the street so we got to go up three four five floors in the parking garage and then find a spot where she can uh fit in you know because the parking spots in central Bangkok are tight I mean they are tight like typically she's not even pulling into the spot she's stopping before she pulls in we're getting out of the car and then she pulls in and she can get out and we can go in together she's also paying for parking so I'm not sure exactly what that typically runs but yeah it just it's a really it's this uh what's the word it's it's a coordinated effort to get together with people in Bangkok can it be done absolutely my friends in Bangkok are accustomed to having to navigate that right like um one of my friends spends a lot of time here at benak kitty Park and so you know she's having they're having to like if they want to play uh a certain sport at bitty Park they really like to play pickle ball then they've got to arrange a spot a week in advance so you can't like if you wanted to go play pickle ball at Beni Kitty Park you can't just show up there and oh we're gonna play no you gotta have your court uh organized right because hundreds of people want to play pickle ball in Bangkok especially at such a convenient location so a lot of coordination goes into it and it's not really a place where you're going to just by your friend's place for coffee um even my you know like I said even My Thai friends that live in Bangkok that have lived in Bangkok for decades now they still have to do a lot of coordinating to make things happen um to get people together and if you live on the opposite side of the city it makes it that much harder like I toyed with the idea of living over here in tombie and then I realized okay if my if my friends live north of the city and east of the city and I'm way down here that's going to be a trek to get all the way over to up here just to start the day right and then at the end of the day let's say we've hung out we're we've had a good time uh they dropped me off at we could whoops U they dropped me off at cam BTS well I'm still gonna have to ride probably 35 uh maybe 40 minutes out here to the west side of the river so I I stayed here and that was really convenient in saton saton is just a really nice area it's one of the nicest areas of the city and it's also very convenient but even that's like a half hour I mean even for me to get to saton uh to Sam is like a a half hour track Tony says all the videos I've seen on Vietnam are always in the biggest few cities would love to see medium smaller siiz cities town that don't cater to tourists uh that's a great Point Tony uh I would say dang is a medium-sized City but it is very touristic it's very much touristic there's and I mentioned it a bit in my first impressions of dang video the city caters a lot to tourists from South Korea you've also got a substantial uh contingent of Russian tourists so um it's deceptive in that I don't know to say if it's deceptive but like at first glance you know I know I don't know to me it was it's been more touristic than I would have thought because a lot of people associated with the kind of the digital Nomad lifestyle coming here to work online and I expected it to be more of like a a working City but it's like beautiful you've got this beautiful beach you've got people paragliding um you've got cafes everywhere I mean I've never been in a city with so many cafes there's a lot in penom pen but I think there's even more here like I've been shocked I'm in a fairly quiet part of the city and we can go back to D name I'm in a fairly quiet part of the city you could see um up here it won't give the address but um even up here like the the main area of town is down here M uh anang um but even up here like there's coffee shops and the cool thing about being up here is that a lot of the coffee shops are like filled with locals so you go further south you see a lot more foreign people a lot more tourists and travelers but up here like they have this they're serving the same products but they're they're a lower price so that's been really cool to me like I was going down there and happy with the prices because the prices are very good here in Vietnam I personally feel like it's the best value for money country I've ever been to or among them probably probably up there alongside Peru Peru like especially Cusco area um you know I don't lead with that like my goal isn't the absolute um most inexpensive place but it's definitely something that's appreciated by all travelers uh or I would say by many Travelers like oh hey can get really good value for money but up here in the monai area then it um you know it feels even much even more so the case like just been really surprised at the quality of the coffees and um the service has been really friendly I found the service to be really friendly here in Vietnam and um people are very helpful like as an example uh tonight I hopped on my bicycle and I went down to we'll pull this up I went down to Pizza House and I realized I forgot my I'll show you guys here I forgot my power bank so I got this power bank that I always travel with it's I should probably like recommend it like put it as a recommended product because it's I like to recommend products that I use that I feel like have saved me a lot of trouble it's the miti brand you can get them on Amazon I think they're they've gone up a bit in price you'd probably get like two of these for 30 bucks something like that but I forgot this it was on the charger and I forgot to throw it in my backpack and I was thinking in my mind oh I'll just throw my phone in the charger when I get there well I get to Pizza House it's like a 15 minute bike ride and I go digging through my backpack because now my phone is down to 10% battery and I'm still new to D I've been here for less than a week so I'm still learning the streets and learning how to get around and how to uh you know I don't quite exactly know where I'm living like I know the general vicinity I know some landmarks but I'm not going to be able to just find it like you know like uh like I would if I were in Bangkok like you could put me back in Bangkok and I'd be able to navigate to my old building without even thinking about it actually a couple different places like I I know Bangkok really well now but I don't know dang so I asked the waitress uh at Pizza House like hey I'm so sorry I forgot my charger do you have a charger and the guy working there he went in the back and like asked around to the other employees and he comes back I I was like ah I'm sorry we don't have it uh well I I'm like oh that's you know that's okay that's understandable I don't expect everybody um you know to have that well I start eating my meal and I'm like okay I better eat fast and get back to my apartment because I don't want to be wandering around theang with a phone that is um out of battery and trying to um you know 9 10 o'clock at night trying to Hope I find somebody that a speaks English and has an iPhone charger um and is comfortable with letting me use it like I'm a total stranger uh and they they so so I'm eating my meal and then I'm get partway through and then the waitress comes up and she's like oh we got one here you can borrow it and it was perfect I charged my phone up to 20% battery I finished my meal I was very thankful for them they really stepped in and helped me out they didn't have to and uh gave them back the charger paid the bill and then 20% battery was sufficient for me to get back to my apartment and throw my phone on the charger and um yeah it was just a great feeling because you know I feel like the phone is a Lifeline when you're traveling especially to new countries countries you've never been to countries where English isn't the first language you're like okay this is like this is how I get back home this is this map is how I get back home and I couldn't just call a grab right some people might say oh well it's your last 10% of battery call up a grab well I've got a bicycle so and it's not even my bicycle I'm actually barring the bicycle for my hosts here so I've got to not use the grab um to get back because I can't just abandon the bicycle um so yeah they really came in and um a big help they they were a really really big help and I can't thank them enough um it's a different kind of friendliness than Thailand to be honest but it's there's definitely friendliness here and you know it's it's taken me some time to understand the differences but yeah I I like it here overall the traffic in big Asian cities the noise pollution chaos really drained me and gr on my nervous system I'd rather be in a town with lots of trees shade less traffic and people also people asking you to buy something every second 30 seconds yeah Tony that's something that can be stressful in Thailand um I love Thailand Thailand is a wonderful country it's a beautiful country but uh part of what makes Bangkok expensive is not that Bangkok is an inherently expensive city I find it to be actually great Bang for your buck if you're somebody that likes big cities I I have a hard time thinking of a city that's going to provide you better value for money that being said there's literally millions of opportunities to spend money I mean you can't somebody I read a joke was kind of funny you can't go more than a 100 meters in Thailand without being able to buy food and so um you go walking down a street and there's 20 30 vendors there you're going to have at least 5 10 people saying hey you you're interested in what I've got and U you can't say yes to everybody right I mean even even if you wanted to right you can only eat so much food even in a city like Bangkok I've eaten until like I almost felt sick in Thailand just to be honest there's no judgment in Thailand for um for just like being a glutton if I'm GNA be honest and you know at a certain point you just you can't say you can't keep saying yes even if you to try everything um and it it same goes with clothes right like I've been to platinum Fashion Mall in Bangkok and it's uh on petur road there's only so much clothing I can buy there's only so many shirts I can buy there's only so many jackets I can buy there's only so many Sho pairs of shoes I can buy um if I said yes to every sales opportunity I'd be broke in a week in Bangkok um because there's so many nice things to spend money on it's the same with the malls right you got malls everywhere in Bangkok um so you have to have a lot of discipline and self-control and sometimes you just don't have the patience for it right I mean especially um I think especially like as you get older you start I I found a lot of people anyway a lot of people that are much wiser than myself uh or have more life experience than myself they know what they like right Tony I I think you're in that position where you know what you want to buy you know what you don't want to buy you know the foods you like you know the um entertainment that you like and there's a lot of it you don't like because you you figure that out by now and so there there's only so much a salesperson is going to get as far as Headway goes when it comes to uh making these different kinds of offers to you um and a lot of us eventually would prefer to settle in a uh you know in a more chill area I think I think that's a great Point um I'm not sure how much I'll get out of the cities in Vietnam because I want to do day trips like we can pull we can go back here um I want to do a day trip to H but I've done some digging now I think of course people's opinion very on this but some of what I I read was that in h it's like a it's a place to go for a weekend it's not necessarily somewhere that a lot of people would want to live but it's like to me it comes down to the individual right like if you're a person that you want to have um peace and quiet you want to be kind of left to your own devices uh you're you're friendly you're friendly person but you're like like you said you're more of an introverted person then it it does in one hand on one hand it can be harder to find these places on the other there's I think more of them um because there's just by their very nature there's a lot of uh small cities small small towns throughout the world that might be a good fit for you for me um in Vietnam most of what I'm hearing about uh comes down to dang Hanoi or hoim men City but you could certainly check out some of these um these other places now I know you know Tony you've talked about that with the heat that that could be something that could wear on you it's definitely wearing on me to some extent like I especially riding the bicycle here in daang I come back soaked and like just sweat I mean I'm just sweating profusely pouring down my face into my eyes um my shirt's stuck to me having to like peel it off when I get back and change into a a dry you know dry shirt and that can um you know that can add to some of the stress there right um and I think part of what makes it a little bit more challenging for me in countries like Vietnam is that because I don't expect people to speak English it makes me a little bit nervous about going to smaller towns not because I think it would be unsafe but because I worry am I going to be able to communicate with people right if I run out of gas or my battery dies um you know am I going to be able to navigate around I know people a lot of people are super friendly and it's it's probably an undue concern for me but that's something where I think Latin America is a better fit because Spanish is going to be an easier uh easier to learn than say like a Vietnamese or a I um you know Bahasa Indonesian um and that's the that's the appeal of the Philippines that's a country where I do have some more confidence that I'd be able to sort out life in a smaller town because a lot of people do speak English there so even though you'd be in a small town uh you'd still be able to connect with people as far as um as far as just like you know navigating like hey where do I get water um like uh you know what's your favorite place to eat around here um what should I be paying for rent um that that kind of thing Tony says your lives always feel like dropping in for a coffee at a friend's house um thanks so much Tony I once again I really appreciate your membership you're the first member of my channel and um yeah it just means a lot to me that I'm I'm able to add value in that way for you uh not sure how you feel about the concept of overdeveloped places but Bangkok seems to fit the bill I like places more organic less super modern not too ant uh antiseptic have you been able to find a quiet part of the city I've heard people mentioning the street vendors are very loud um so great question Tony I found we can go back to this my old neighborhood saton is somewhat quiet it's it's one of the I guess full disclosure it's one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the city you see a lot of like at least around my apartment building uh where I was staying I was staying here I don't mind sharing it um I was staying at Bon RM saton and I saw a lot of big houses around me and there's a lot of like beautiful Shop houses throughout this neighborhood they I did have the issue and this might have been because I wasn't in a highrise like part of what some people um the way they mitigate the noise in Bangkok is that they stay in like a really tall highrise and so they're way elevated way above the street level noise um but I did notice people with modified bikes riding by my apartment a lot uh and that could be you know that could be a bit noisy to be honest um I felt like it wasn't as bad as say like Victory Monument like as far as the noisiest place I lived uh was when I first landed in Bangkok I was staying up here at Victory monument and this is like a transer ation Hub so so much traffic in the city flows through victory Monument you've got the bus um basically the it's almost like a deao bus station here so all the buses in the city stop here or many of the buses in the city stop here and pass through there's also a bunch of construction going on around Victory Monument um and so I would wake up at like six o'clock in the morning to jackhammers and they'd go sometimes at night until like 8 n 10 o'clock at night and so uh that could be a bit disruptive I would say with a city like Bangkok and I actually got a recommendation because I remember reaching out to some friends several years ago asking people like where do you live in Bangkok why do you like living there and people were telling me we live out on the outskirts so a lot of people like living like way out here and so you see the the there starts to be more green space out here they're um they're telling me it's the best of both worlds because they can get to the city center um in a reasonable amount of time but they're not surrounded by buildings they're not surrounded by traffic the air quality tends to be a bit better out here on the outskirts it's also got more of a local Vibe um that's that's kind of like how I would approach it if I was somebody who wanted to visit Bangkok but uh didn't want to be in the hustle and bustle the constant pressure um but I think that's a fair I think that's a fair point when it comes to um overdevelopment like it's you know it's not something that what's the word I'm looking for it's not something that necessarily I I don't like because for me it's a big contrast to where I'm from like I always felt like growing up in the Midsouth um I always admired cities like LA or New York because they had these they're the drivers of culture in the United States um you know we we get Trends in Nashville that came from California or came from New York certain catchphrases that we'd hear you know five 10 years down the line I remember a friend in Nashville telling me how his mom would get a clothing cataloges from California and with the inter it's it's democratized a lot of that stuff right so like if I'm living in a smaller City I can buy all that the hot fashion trends online um if I'm living in a smaller City maybe I don't have all of the high-end Cuisine options of Bangkok but I could probably get to a big city pretty quick and even in like the small to mediumsized cities in Thailand there's great Cuisine like there's I'll pull up hot really quick like even in Hai which is I think the third or fourth largest city in Thailand there's some nice steak houses um in this city like you can go have a nice steak um some of the best pizza in Thailand I had was here in hot so like in some cases better than the pizza I found in Bangkok I tried quite a few pizzas in Bangkok and I was like I miss the pizzas in hot like you know even though it's not the first place that comes to mind a lot of tourists in hot are from Malaysia you see how far we are from Bangkok how far you are from puket or c b um it's still got plenty of that so I think with the internet you've got people that they're like okay I'm not moving to Bangkok I'm living in hot I want to do a pizza uh a pizza spot where because you know a lot of people Tai people in hot are like hey I want to have pizza but I don't want to go up to Bangkok I want to stay right here in hot so so with the Internet it's really it's lessened some of the requirement or the need to live in a mega City and I'll contrast that a bit too uh well not really contrast but complement that to in a bit um but yeah I think as you move forward more and more into the modern era there's you can get 75 80% of what Bangkok has to offer without the hustle and bustle without the overdevelop feeling without the um I'm in a hurry I'm in a hurry kind of atmosphere in Bangkok right because bangkok's an international business City like you've got people coming there from all over the world to do business the tybot is the 10th most circulated currency in the world uh 10th most 10th most used currency in the world I think it's like number nine in terms of number of billionaires in the world um so it's it's it's one of the most developed cities in the world um and some people you know they feel I don't know disappointed is Right phrase about that um but like I got a friend named Larry uh he's from New York travel big-time traveler he's traveled all over the world and he's uh he's been traveling for much longer than I've been alive and he used he used the phrase about Bangkok the Singapore isation of Bangkok so some people feel like as Bangkok becomes more and more internationally relevant as it becomes more and more of this important Hub that they in the effort of development that there's a tradeoff there um that you don't have a small town vibe that like with saton uh Bangkok Pat does a great we come back up here Bangkok Pat does a uh well it's not what I was looking for but close enough um he does a great video on saton he released it he actually walked by my apartment um I'll I'll throw his name down here in the chat because he's probably my favorite oh that was let me see if I can delete that I was not intending to okay yeah retracted that Bangkok Pat so that's his name Bangkok Pat he's one of my favorite Thailand YouTubers but he shows where uh saton like the neighborhood was divided up into um you know into plots and like back in the day before it was super developed and it does have a little bit more of that small town Vibe but the development of Bangkok was so rapid that um yeah yeah I mean that's that's a fair point um as far as the quiet part of the city like I said I i' say the outskirts of the city are a good option um I'd also say you know this is somewhat of a compromise but looking at some of the buildings around lumini Park uh or Benji Kitty Park where you're not quite like in a quiet area but you are able to enjoy the green space in lini you are able to enjoy the green space in Benji Kitty Park um I found them to be wonderful if there's one thing I regret about staying in saton is it was like probably 30 45 minutes to get to lumini or Benji Kitty um but a lot of people and I noticed a ton of foreigners in these Parks too where they're thinking like you are Tony they were craving uh that green space um I wanted to make it down to the green lung I didn't because I got covid and that was that was not fun um but here's the green lung so this is like a Botanical Park but even then you know it's just uh there's limited space there um so it's probably not the best place for uh for somebody looking to kind of have a laid-back atmosphere to be honest like I did feel worn out um I did feel worn out after three months in Bangkok I it just it's more it's many more people than what I'm used to um I growing up in a smaller city or a mediumsized city I idealized the big city as these places that were happening you know like I mentioned New York and La as being Originators of culture but that was just because I didn't live in those cities when I actually spent more time in those cities and I got to talking to people from New York or La I found out some people really don't like living in New York some people really don't like living in La uh it's a choice of necessity for work for their career maybe their education or their family is from there but they don't want to live in those cities uh either but it's just out of necessity and so they would almost Envy some people like us who we could choose to live out elsewhere and we're more accustomed to living elsewhere I found throughout my Journeys the cities that I've really enjoyed the most are the cities that are similar in size to my hometown like one to two million people um because they they're most comparable in level of development to what what I'm accustomed to um I'm not used to this gridlock traffic sitting in a car for two three hours um being able to walk faster than traffic uh crowding onto a bus where it's standing room only crowding onto a train where it's standing room only um I'm used to being able to just hop in the car and get across town in 30 minutes uh I'm used to being able to have some level of convenience like um some nice places to eat in my neighborhood but not um not having the experience of everybody in this city is passing through my neighborhood because I'm on a main arterial Road and this is the only way people can get home is to drive through my neighborhood um and that can just kind of wear on you where you're like okay who are my neighbors are my neighbors my immediate neighbors are are half the people in the city my neighbors um you know living in Sou like there's uh let me grab my charger I'll be right back I got to grab my charger here living in saton [Music] um you know there's like a a motorbike taxi stand there's um a local market oriented toward locals and they were very confused to see me like um I saw very few foreigners in saton especially away from the BTS like here in saton if you're uh near the BTS yeah you'll see more foreigners a lot of them stay in like I said the really tall SK skyscrapers but this like this Cemetery for example most haunted space in Bangkok according to a lot of people they tchu um Cemetery there and not seeing very many foreigners back here like uh this neighborhood I think it's called Yen yenet Village um and so a lot of the people in this neighborhood don't really need English um so you're not going to really be able to communicate well with people that can add to the isolation where you're not seeing businesses catering to uh tourists and so if you're expecting to use some English you're not going to really see that if you're expecting like some western style or some International Food not going to really see much of that back here and uh it's very much residential as opposed to commercial or um even somewhere in between the two big Lance says good luck over there peace from Poland thank you so much big Lance I really appreciate your kind words um I've never been to Poland but it's definitely on the list I know there's a channel where's West and he's uh he's actually Filipino American so his family is from the Philippines but uh he grew up in LA and he's living in um he's living in Poland right now he actually spent about six months in Southeast Asia and he said that he felt like it was just too chill um southeast Asia for him is a great place to relax kick back enjoy a cold smoothie um but he felt like it was harder to get motivated to get things done here because the lifestyle here is so comfortable because he can just chill out the cost of living is the lowest in the world I would say as far as cost of living versus quality of life southeast Asia is impossible to be I'm a fan of Latin America but there's no getting around it it's not as uh economical um so if you're wanting some pressure to like produce then it's a little bit harder here because like you can get away with living on $800,000 a month 1,200 a month where you're going to have a harder time getting by on that amount in um much of uh Latin America or Eastern Europe probably Eastern Europe more so than Latin America I did find that Cusco I could live on that amount um there's probably some other places like aripa and Peru could probably pull that off um but I think you still need to be a bit more mindful in part because like I said Spanish is an easier language for people coming from English so for me the easier I can communicate with people the more likely I am to spend money because it's just reduces the friction there as far as spending money goes um but I do miss Latin America I'd like to get back over there I'm not sure when that will happen uh it may be uh you know a few years in the future um but yeah Tony I know we've talked a lot about your interest in Latin America and in line with what you've said it seems like Latin America will offer more of what you're looking for and um you know it's also closer to your home country I know that uh you're from Canada and that if you're looking to maybe you need to go back and forth maybe have some Investments or friends or family that kind of thing back home then to get there from Latin America is going to be a lot faster than from Southeast Asia like if you're trying to get to Canada from Southeast Asia you're looking at like probably a 12-h hour flight minimum to Vancouver and then another several hour flight from there um but yeah yeah Poland is interesting big Lance I I'd love to learn more about your experiences in Poland curious about the be situation it seems like the Visa there may be more advantageous than Western Europe because I know it's really popular among digital Nomads um yeah Poland seems like an interesting place and I'm not sure if you're still watching Big Lance so feel free to chime in like what uh what your favorite activities are there if there's like museums that you're into maybe there's some cultural events you participated in uh just curious to know more about it because I haven't been to that part of Europe Tony asks do you have a balcony that's always a plus to look for for introverts you can be in part of the City without having to be right in it um I like the way you use Google Maps zooming in and out to get a feel of a place thanks so much Tony I think Google Maps is a fantastic tool it's so underrated uh and it's just so helpful but yeah so I do have a rooftop I don't have a balcony here I have a nice big window um it's kind of hard to see but I'll show you guys yeah you can see there I've got the curtains drawn I like to keep them drawn to uh especially during the day to keep the heat down and to help with the um help keep the room cool but beautiful balcony or not uh balcony I'm sorry beautiful big Windows there but if I want more of an open air kind of experience and I uh I'll go up to the rooftop and there's a beautiful roof I try to take some pictures up there but my iPhone uh was trying to throw up the Flash and they're kind of blurry I will um I should have I should have recorded the fireworks with my um osmo pocket I will go up there with my osmo pocket and show a bit of the rooftop because it's a gorgeous view of the skyline and you really get a better sense of the city when you are up there and uh I don't think it's super popular for people to go up there aside from during the fireworks show it's uh it seems like a lot of people in my building anyway are pretty busy and they don't have as much time to enjoy the rooftop um but yeah I think it's it's a great way to it's a great way to enjoy the city um some of my favorite times in Bangkok have been on some rooftops and I think it's such a cool way to experience the city where you you kind of close off some of the city right you close off some of the stimuli some of the input and you can clear your mind you can focus something I do really like about this apartment is these this Greenery they they just kind of included it but you can see I've got I've got these plants uh yeah it looks like bamboo and I'm not sure what that is but it really adds to the fresh feeling here there's some others too uh in the apartment but I really like that they include that it's a really a fresh feeling City if that's I'm not sure the best way to put it but it's um it's uplifting there there's definitely like an uplifting Vibe here and dang oh and so the other place we can um the other place that I want to see well I didn't I didn't actually I pulled up ho but I didn't really talk about it oh I did talk about it a little bit is hoen so this is like probably 45 minutes south of where I'm at right now maybe 30 minutes south and it's supposed to be pretty touristic um but you've got this like uh old style kind of thing where they preserved a lot of the older buildings and you can see the way that this area probably looked like maybe 50 years ago maybe 75 years ago uh let's show that actually so you see like the old old style development and design you see the lady looks like she's paddling um some kind of boat that looks identical to the boats I see in the harbor here so there's like I don't know if it's kind of a harbor people go fishing um they catch all these small fish and then they leave them out in these big pots to dry it looks like a similar boat to what those folks are using um Jake also recommended I check out hyan and so I'll probably do that probably next weekend probably next weekend I'll uh look into well I'll look into it this week and try to plan it out and go down there for a day trip now with hoan it does seem that um it's one of those places people seem to love or hate it's not a place that people feel neutral on um and I guess you could say that about any place but some people they love way am because they get this old school kind of feeling you see the beautiful buildings that are more traditional there uh you what's the word you feel I guess the word is transported uh to some extent now this looks a bit newer this doesn't look like as traditional and then other feel others feel like it's maybe a bit more touristic than what they're looking for they feel like it's kind of geared toward entertaining people um as opposed to um catering to people living there like I did some research on what it would be like to live there and some suggested well you will have a lot of tourism in the city you're you're be running into a lot of people that are U kind of transient they're coming down to highend for a day or maybe a weekend and then they're heading out and so uh they feel like then um you know it's not it's May the city May struggle to cater to long-term stays um I'm I'm willing to give it a shot you know I'm willing to check it out and share my honest opinion about it I feel that way about most cities like regardless of the reputation I mean when I went down to Patia I heard either that patio was the best place on Earth or the worst place on Earth I felt like it was okay there's some things I really liked about it I liked the terminal 21 mall I liked the I don't know how to expl it's just such a unique Place Pia is just such a unique Place very strange in some ways I I don't it might be one of the Str strest places I've ever been um and I could see why some people don't like it but I was like H you know there's a lot of good food here there's a lot of modern conveniences um there's also kind of an underbelly there um that might rub people the wrong way it's certainly not for everyone but uh yeah I I'm willing to uh to give uh most places a shot um G hey from Bangkok what's up GMM I'm sorry that I didn't get a chance to meet up with you I ended up like running some health issues in my last uh my last few weeks in Bangkok I got covid and then had like an ankle issue and so I was like laying in bed up until like a day or two before I left Bangkok like yeah like a couple days before I left Bangkok um so I think you may have been the person that reached out like hey let's meet up in Bangkok so hope we can uh do a rain check there and link up again in the future but um yeah I'm here in dang settling in and it's uh it's great I do want to get some water because my throat is dry [Music] Tony says yes that was a great way to describe the benefits of a balcony closing off the stimuli I will use uh that phrase from now on I mean the way you just described balconies well thank you so much Tony yeah it's um there is an element of exclusivity to some of the rooftops in Bangkok I mean I went to a rooftop with some friends this was six months ago I think this was in January um I was there to extend my Visa I was living I think I was living in changai at the time and my friend said hey let's go check out this rooftop uh I don't know if it was a rooftop it was like on the 40 44th floor of this building and they had a nice uh kind of a deck area and so uh at that coffee shop you know the drinks are you are paying a premium so the coffee was like 250 bot which is pretty expensive for a coffee in Thailand this is like seven bucks something like that $7 in change but you're paying for the view right and because you get this beautiful view of the skyline and you're also paying for the exclusivity so you're not like packed in there you've got really comfortable Furniture plenty of seating nice Wi-Fi and you can really relax um some places in Thailand are so so uh busy with people it can be tough to have a conversation right um it's so to me like the $7 is well worth it I'm like yeah okay it's expensive for coffee but I'm really paying for this peace and quiet in the middle of a city of 15 million people where space is in extremely high demand and most businesses cater to either lots of people paying a low price or a few people paying a high price I'm willing to pay a high price um and this isn't about Bangkok I'll speak about San Francisco here in this instance but I went to a really nice Michelin star restaurant in San Francisco for my birthday a couple of years ago and uh the price was around $300 and I had a bunch of credit card points saved up so I paid much less than that I think I I uh when I used up my points I ended up spending 80 bucks um so it was a really nice restaurant one of the nicest meals I've ever had in my life but it was my 30th birthday I wanted to really just treat myself and go out and enjoy something nice and uh a former friend of mine uh somebody I reconnected with the time was like oh I would never go there I would never spend that kind of money um you know her D dur and um I was like man I'm paying that because there's a lot of people in San Francisco I don't want to eat dinner with um there's a lot of people in San Francisco that I'd rather not uh spend time with and when you're paying that kind of price you're not paying for the like you're not paying for the people that you're going to be around as much as like only you're also paying for the people you're not going to be around right so like if I go to McDonald's and SF and like there's you know people wigging out and like people melting down that's not a very fun experience would I do that yeah I've been to McDonald's and SF I'm not too good for McDonald's but there's times when I don't want that experience that's not a critique of Bangkok I haven't found uh that situation in Bangkok it's more just a matter of like people are going to have their conversations they're going to be Lively they're going out with their friends in Bangkok they want to have a good time and sometimes you just want to have a quiet cup of coffee with your friends um take in the city like process your experience um digest the foods you had like you yeah stimul yeah the stimuli in any Mega City can just be overwhelming I've had similar feelings in New York City like when I visited New York City last time I visiting New York City was about 10 years ago and I remember uh going out to a bar with my girlfriend at the time and we order our drinks and immediately the bartender says you know there's uh you know you there's an expectation of tipping and I'm thinking wow like I'm used to you know bars back in Nashville I order a drink and I relax I enjoy it maybe 15 20 minutes I maybe 30 minutes I order another and then at the end of the night I Tab out and I tip then right like it's it's not just this transactional where in New York City she's thinking you're here for one drink you better tip as soon as you get your drink because you might disappear out the door and then I don't get my expected compensation so um that kind of put a damper on the experience you know Because my ex-girlfriend uh girlfriend at the time was she was a bartender herself so she was surprised because in Nashville she wouldn't you know bring that kind of attitude um to somebody but I get it it's expensive city people are hustling trying to get ahead um they've got stuff to do so um but yeah big cities can be very much over stimulating for introverts um D GMM says Ah dang is a good place Vietnam overall is good and food is fantastic fastic only thing I never get used to is the traffic in all the major cities and I've been driving a scooter in Bangkok many years yeah the traffic here is wild um definitely had a few close calls um it's it's something to get it to to get used to I keep my head on a swivel when I'm riding my pedal bicycle around dining uh constantly double triple quadruple checking because sometimes people are driving in the wrong direction ction sometimes the streets will fill up because you'll have buses and one and somebody will be parked in the street and there will be a bus coming from the other direction so one bus drives around in the wrong lane and so all of a sudden it gets locked up and there and so then there's motorbike drivers piling up like behind them and so then those people start driving on the sidewalks to try to get around the buses I actually got hit uh not fortunately not hard and I was more of a surprise than anything else but I was on the sidewalk just staring at like this these buses playing chicken one decides okay I'm going to back up but of course the motorbikes get tired of that so this motorbike comes flying around onto the sidewalk and bumps into me and I yell out like like what are you doing dude and uh he's like oh sorry sorry he even said in English but that was my like welcome to Vietnam moment um I you know I get it like it's a developing country it's rapidly developing uh they're quite literally building the city and trying to sort out the flow of traffic and the infrastructure but it's a major adjustment um I'm not a motorbike rider I'm just I just didn't grow up on it and I struggled to adjust to it uh so you know that's something that um that was a real shock and I think it's even more extreme in Hanoi um or like hoochi men City it's uh yeah some of the wildest traffic I've ever probably the wildest traffic I've ever experience I guess that's yeah out of 20 countries or close to it I think that uh I think Vietnam has some of the wildest traffic um how to cross the road Vietnam for uh Tony says have to step out for a bit looking forward to your next update well thank you uh so much Tony I hope you have a wonderful day so great to chat and catch up um and yeah I hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend and and have a great week ahead GMM says how to cross the road in Vietnam for dummies close your eyes pray walk and hope nobody hits you yeah I mean you have to kind of just like force your way through and one tip I heard and this is like I still don't fully understand it they were like don't make eye contact if you make eye contact then people will assume they can go and so you have to like not make eye contact and I'm like that's the opposite of a lot of places I go to I'm trying to make eye contact with the driver because if we see each other then they register that I'm there but here it's like you just have to push your way through and the flow is is confusing one thing that I've tried to do that's helped me somewhat is that I wait for a Vietnamese driver to go through and I try to ride side by side with them parallel or right behind them um because that way I can they I feel like they know the traffic a lot better than I do and they're able to uh navigate the S situation more effectively I have had I have been cut off you know I feel like the uh the bicycle like the regular pedal bicycle is the lowest the lowest in the tier um and so I have been cut off and and had to stop because uh a bus is like right beside me and like there's you know there's also a car parked in the road and so there's not really much space there uh so I've tried to be more patient and tried to remind myself hey this beats walking if I were to do all these trips by walking I'd never get anything done walking an hour here an hour there in the city so um it's been an exercise and patience but then sometimes like you just got to go because there's people behind you there's people the left of you the people people to the right of you people coming in the wrong direction um the roundabouts uh there's a few roundabouts here in dang can really like you're just like okay you know grip grip the uh grip the handlebars and just go for it right um and and understand that people are going to just fly through the intersection sometimes so yeah it's uh it's wild but yeah GMM I definitely there's been a few times where I'm like okay prayers like just hope I make it you know hope I make hope I make it there um the worst I've experienced so far has been rush hour to be fair uh during the day uh not terrible later in the evening not terrible but during like during rush hour here even though dang is not a mega City by any means that's when I've seen it seem to be the wildest that's when I've seen it seem to be the most intense or the most uh pushy is when people are trying to get home from work um you know you've also got the tourism traffic on top of that uh Jared says welcome Jared by the way I don't know if I've seen your name on here before but thanks so much for joining us the big cities of Asia are over stimulating yet the suburbs of the West are under stimulating yeah I totally agree Jared I mean it's it's a tradeoff I don't look at anywhere as better than the other I know some people will ask me what did you done what cities do you not like or what cities do you like to me it's all about tradeoffs um I have my preference but I don't think any one place is better than the other but I think it's a tradeoff where in the west you know in the suburbs like I grew up part of the time in the suburbs you know it's boring like it is and there are like few places more boring on Earth than a suburb and a western democracy because that's what they're designed for right that's they're designed for people that um they probably saved up a bit they probably had a longer career they're looking to chill out maybe they're um you know a bit older maybe they inherited that home in the suburbs and it's uh yeah you just feel I mean you feel bored right like it's it's designed to be boring the experience in the western suburb is designed to be boring and predictable um go to the grocery store go to the Post Office you can handle your errands in town and then you drive back to your house and you stay in your box for the rest of the night right like um you're you know it's designed for you to um to not have a lot of unexpected experiences like it's supposed to be very very predictable and I think all humans need like both we need certainty and we need uncertainty and too much of one uh stresses people out I think too much certainty can lead people toward kind of sadness uh feeling and too much uncertainty can make make people feel a bit anxious um so I feel a bit like kind of sad and bored when I'm in the suburbs in the western democracies United States is the one I have the experience with um where it's like wow like in my hometown especially has been kind of turned into it was always this way but even more so in the last 5 10 years into a community for people to go and retire in so you can imagine like it's there's just not much going on after dark uh most of the businesses close at like 900 p.m um and it's you know the cops come out in full force and they're keeping an eye on people uh they're trying to stop people pull people over for no reason uh this is in the United States and they don't want you to have a good time um so it's like not only does the layout of the suburb contribute to just not doing much but also the people that live there want to filter and select for people who also don't want to really do a whole lot contrast this with the big cities of Asia where it's just like all out you know in your face like Unapologetic uh Wild neon lights everywhere people zooming by on motorbikes um you could smell 10,000 different smells like many of which are Pleasant and some of which are not so pleasant you've got uh people barking out what they're selling you just yeah it's it's a really strong contrast um and that that's part of the beauty of life is experiencing those contrasts because there's times when I miss those wearing suburbs there's times where I'm like oh my God traffic here is just I thought traffic was bad in my hometown no traffic here is a whole another level so it's all about the balance and appreciating being able to had both experiences in life and having a a high contrast life having these experiences that are so just like opposite you know opposite to one perpendicular to one another GMM scooter goes around you cars don't they hopefully stop yeah most of the cars do stop I'll give them credit there a lot of them do stop and try to like nobody wants to like hurt somebody most people don't want to hurt anybody else um so would give them I think they they they don't get as much credit as they deserve um rush hour in Saigon is the most intensive I've seen I've been here in Asia 15 years working and travel around and work um yeah I saw a video something Robin um he's a channel I've kind of followed off and on for a while and he recently did a trip in in Southeast Asia he's from New Zealand and the videos he showed of Saigon I'm just like wow that is that is perhaps most intense I've seen video um of any City in Asia and I've been to a lot of the big Asian cities like uh many of the big cities in Japan I've been to Singapore um all the big cities in Thailand of course the big largest city in Cambodia um and it's it's just a whole another level I mean it's just so intense like it's you really got to have some strong guts to be able to navigate it and I think he did get worn out after a few weeks which I can imagine coming from New Zealand which is a fairly uh limited population country to like Saigon which has probably tripled the people uh of the entire country of New Zealand live in Saigon I think Saigon's around like 15 million people um let me look that up actually okay 9 million well that was five years ago N9 million but yeah even nine million that's like double the population of New Zealand and so I could see why somebody coming from a less densely populated country would be super overwhelmed by that um I yeah I'll definitely keep what you said in mind about Saigon GMM because it's uh you know it's appealing I know my grandfather spent some time there after the Vietnam uh situation he he was in the military and he spent a lot of time in Saigon and he loved it I mean he absolutely loved it but this was a long time ago when Saigon was not nearly as densely populated and he yeah I think he really had a great time and it was a time for him to like let off steam after uh doing his job and that situation and I'd like to kind of follow in some of his footsteps and see some of the places that he might have seen of course many of them have changed a lot since then but I'm sure there's museums I know there's museums that I want to check out I know Jake mentioned uh he saw he's been to I think been to some um museums here uh not not here in dang but in Hanoi and uh that's something I'd like to do as well to learn about the history and learn about the yeah back then it was bicycles I I wish we could go back to that to some extent that it's not nearly as efficient to be fair like not nearly as much would get done um people would not be able to get to work right like if you live 20 30 minute you know you live far enough away from the city on uh a bicycle like it's just not as efficient but I do dream of um of that you know at times but yeah I'm I'm uh I'm interested you know to learn more about your experiences I it's impressive that you've been here in Asia for 15 plus years and you uh you've you know been working that's a sort of a dream of mine to be honest with you is to uh have some kind of cination I don't I don't know exactly how I approach that um part of me is thought why don't I apply to the MBA program at ncad ncad is in Singapore because I know getting a a degree from there now I don't know if I'd get in I'm I'm not the most spectacular candidate in the world but just trying to sort out like some way to move here to Asia long term I've been over here for about a year now and I could see myself saying for another year um but I'd like to chart a path toward having a career in this part of the world um because yeah I mean I think there's a lot that to unpack there but I think Asia's part of the future just the a lot of these Asian countries seem like they're on the up and up there's this sense of optimism I feel over here people feel like tomorrow is going to be better than today of course the safety factor I feel far safer in Asia than I do in the United States um there's also the cuisine I'm just I grew up on Asian food in America and Asian food in Asia is like a whole new level it just agrees with my system a lot better overall also also the culture I mean I just feel more at home here in Southeast Asia than I do back in the States I mean I have some wonderful friends back in the States of course I speak English so I'm able to communicate with people effectively but I never really what's the word I didn't really grow up around a lot of Asian people I grew up in Nashville and back when I grew up in Nashville there's just not that many Asian people a lot of my Asian friends if I'm being totally transparent they went to college and then bounced off to the West Coast or bounced off to the East Coast or bounced down to Texas um they got out of there so uh that's not to to trash my hometown but it's something that there's just less friction there um I I can and it's not just you know people of that background it's also people that have an affinity for this part of the world which clearly there's lots of people from around the world that love being um in this part of the world and they want to spend time here and so that's kind of part of my longterm plan I'd like to sort out a way to live here in Southeast Asia long term it's I like it a lot you know the heat does take some adjusting to but I mean there's just so much to like about it um there's so much to like about it I haven't gotten tired of it I thought I might have gotten tired of it but I haven't gotten tired of it I was anticipating ah you know I wouldn't mind going back to the States for a few weeks or a month to you know to see people that I miss and to get some errands done but like I already know like if and when I go back that there's going to be the thought in the back of my mind I can't wait to get back to Asia you know for the next time because day-to-day life here is just there's so many conveniences I mean it's I it's been shocking to me people are like oh how are you g to adapt to living over there and here in many ways it feels more convenient than living back home Ibrahim says could you please give me some advice for Hanoi um hello uh nice to meet you Ibrahim I this may be your first time on the stream it's nice to meet you as as well I haven't been to Hanoi so I can't um I can't provide advice for Hanoi unfortunately I have heard it's the cultural capital of Vietnam that you have a lot of options for museums why don't we actually been on hoan for too long here let me pull up Hanoi you've got hot the lake um so I know Harold Baler um really big YouTuber he uh he's in Vietnam right now he ate at a restaurant along the lake this is a very popular place for people to walk around and check out I would say there's also the there's a tunnels Museum I think it's maybe that's in South Vietnam uh but there's definitely some museums in Hanoi that you might enjoy I would say oh Hanoi opera house okay this looks cool this might be a place to check out this is ornate gorgeous wow they really put a lot of work into this um so this is something I would check out is the Opera House what else Temple of literature so this is a confusion Temple very very beautiful wow yeah I would check out the temples I would check out the um museums let's see what else we got here mum another Temple and the pagot so this is this this pagot is on the lake here you might even I don't know if they offer this but I've done this in penom pen there might be a red river cruise so you might look into seeing if they have a cruise where you could like I don't know if you start up here and come down here or how that would go but River Cruises are really nice and southeast Asia a lot of them offer like a a buffet so you can have dinner and maybe have some beverages I not a drinker myself but I do like a lot of smoothies and juices so they offered some of that when I did a a river cruise in Pome pen um that was a highlight of my time in Pome pen and that's saying a lot because that's incredible City but yeah I'd recommend checking out some of those things and of course like the malls I mean I'm just a fan of the malls and Southeast Asia in general great place to cool off a great place to um just turning down my AC a bit Hanoi is very busy and pretty Chinese and mindset can be cold weather up there and the food is amazing yeah very cool um thank you for sharing that GMM so uh what I've heard a lot is that internationally speaking and more specifically in the states I I speak a lot about the states because that's where I'm from I do apologize to my subscribers and viewers from the uh countries like Canada New Zealand Australia Western Europe um but um you know most of the exposure to Vietnamese cuisine that I've seen in the US is from the south from South Vietnam and my Vietnamese American friends are uh I think they're all from the south so their families their families originated from Southern Vietnam uh and that's um that's where a lot of people I think are surprised when they go to the north because they're expecting Southern Vietnamese cuisine for example um and they're getting something that's very different they've got their own style up there that's quite different from the south uh Vietnamese and hoi men often think people in Hanoi are rude and uh more you know that way and their behavior um yeah you know I've I've read that online that there you know there's there are some differences there that are where it's important to be mindful of those differences and you know consider those as far as like what you're looking for I am focused on uh denying for my purposes I'm planning on exiting uh out of um hoochi Min City because I worry that if I try to do all three in one trip that you know it would be kind of rushed um but you know people have a great time in both cities I have heard that you do have to be cautious about uh more cautious about touts in in anoy um you know Petty kind of scams I can't speak from personal experience um I would never assume or assert that that's an issue without having been there done that and there's there's advantages to to both places but I'll probably wind down here in the next five minutes or so guys I've been on here for a couple hours and my voice is uh I can feel starting to go and I've got um yeah I've got some I've got to work on some videos tomorrow um living in Southeast Asia is really interesting you can spend $10 a day or $10,000 a day it's all up to you and what you want I totally agree GMM like it it's mind-blowing to me the the accessibility like it to me it feels very much inclusive uh if you want to go and sit on a small stool and eat $2 bowl of noodles you can do that if you want to go to a high-end dinner and spend $1,000 you can do that if and everything in between um if you want to take a weekend trip and like you're we'll just use Bangkok as an example you love living in Bangkok but you want to take a weekend trip to a different country you know you could spend 50 hundred bucks each way and be on a flight a few hours later and be in a totally different country with a totally different language a different atmosphere different culture different way of life and you have so much Variety in the region at all different price points uh I found that I have my favorite but it's very much accessible to go see and do other things I mean it was wild to me my flight from Bangkok to here in dang was like equivalent of 60 bucks so it was like 2,000 B $55 to go to a totally different country totally different city totally different vibe and uh I'm really enjoying Vietnam I'm still PE peeling back the layers of the onion H but yeah it seems like a place where you can come on a low budget and enjoy yourself you're not going to go hungry you're not gonna uh you know you'll have a place to stay you'll be able to get around but if you want to go all out on the luxury side of things you want to stay in a really nice place you want to um you know travel in style you want to go on a big shopping spree uh you want to have a fine dining it's it's really incredible in that way it's um the scale of options is hard to beat I think it's really unique in that way but uh yeah everybody feel free to chime in with any last thoughts or questions I think I'm going to be winding down here shortly just because my my voice is starting to go I do have a a video I'm working on editing and it's I don't know I I may need to to refilm parts of it I don't know that it got sometimes I get off track when I'm making a video and I start talking about things I go off on a tangent and I don't stick to the topic and so sometimes I feel like I start rambling and I've got to cut that out and get my you know get my mind back on the track I'm add so uh it's called like why do people judge you for going to Thailand and that's uh you know that's something that came to mind because it's um it's something that I've noticed right I mean I I've definitely faced some judgment for living in Thailand for a year and I don't think that's going to stop it's uh it's just part of the reality people have their perceptions and you know Jake said something interesting to me and I really appreciate this is like part of like my Channel right now is a little bit about expad apologetics I feel like a lot of people who like to live in other parts of the world get all this flak and like blowback and this disrespect and this condescension and like I want to come up with some support for people that are experiencing that because it's just this recurring theme I keep noticing over and over again um and I I want people to feel like they're not alone um GMM says well 1 am here so time to sleep have a good night and try to sleep thanks so much GMM yeah I had a solid workout today I've also biked a bunch like I'm thrilled to be getting back into exercise and it's a Vietnam is super convenient for getting into shape I'm that's something I'm loving about it here is the food is uh light and the gyms are everywhere it's yeah there's a a big Fitness Community here which I wasn't expecting but is really refreshing Jared says today I watched many of your videos and concur with many of the thoughts expressed in your videos hope to see more soon thanks well thank you so much Jared I really appreciate your support and I'm glad you've enjoyed a lot of these videos I'm continuously trying to improve my craft trying to get better at editing trying to get better at uh you know having lighting trying to avoid repeating myself to maximize the value of your time R says the West is full of haters yeah or I mean it's it's unfortunately it's true like I notice it more and more people are very dissatisfied with their lives in the west they feel like they were promised that things were going to keep getting better and now in a lot and United States I'll just specifically talking about the United States it seems like more like it's kind of like going downhill in some ways um and people don't know what to make of it you know they thought that that every generation would live better than the generation before and that's not the case with I'm a millennial technically it's not the case with the Millennials I think the generations after me the people even younger than me are even more have even more discontent you see a lot of these issues that I think there's this kind of existential crisis facing a lot of young people in Western democracies where they're not really sure they don't have a strong sense of hope or optimism for the future and it's really really sad it's it's really really sad um I I notice people seem stressed out like when I talk to people back home people just seem on edge they're struggling with bills they're struggling with like a lot they're just they're struggling a lot and uh it's it's shocking I mean I it's it's weird because I grew up in the 90 well I the first decade in my life most of of that was in the 90s and there was just like oh yeah things are going to be awesome and like the future is going to be awesome and now here I am in the future and like people are unhappy they're frustrated they feel like they've been so sold the bill of goods um it's I don't know what to make of it but I'm going to try to narrate it and talk about it as much as I can and keep the discussion going add to the discussion contribute my piece my experiences and give a platform to people like you that can share in the discussion section like hey this is this is my feeling about it this has been my experience this has been my observation but uh yeah I'm going to cut it there thank you so much everyone for joining really appreciate all of you watching if you're watching the replay of this if you're not a subscriber subscribe to the Channel Down Below you can catch a lot of different videos that I'm putting out you can join us for streams um sometimes I'm not the best at announcing them in advance but yeah uh also you know if you're watching the replay give us a thumbs up it helps to distribute the video to more people um and yeah thanks so much everyone I hope all of you have a good night if you are over in this part of the world if you are uh back home then I hope you have a good day and we'll see you soon

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